My cousin was playing it on the computer when I was like 8 years old and I thought it was really confusing. Then I bought it at probably 28yo and found it pretty neat as a puzzle game.
I don't think i completed it though because I don't have any memory of a memorable ending

Stealth used to be one of my favorite genres so I played the shit out of it when I was younger. The way sound, light, and even AI worked blows everything modern out of the water and it's a really sad state of affairs for the genre that the gold standard has never been surpassed. I'd absolutely love for a studio to commit to and see great success from making the perfect modern stealth game that everyone has been craving for decades now.

>How come recent titles in the stealth genre seem to lack the "magic" that old series had
Money. It all comes down to how much it costs for a studio to set up and develop a sophisticated stealth game because unlike a lot of other genres stealth is probably one of the hardest to develop and implement correctly. I don't think most indie studios have the funds to really go at it and solo devs that could do it seem to be infatuated with other types of games.

The only studios really fit to make a proper Thief successor would be AAA studios and they don't really seem interested in the niche. The market for it is small and most people are fine with more sloppily slapped together "STEALTH" which is more just a forced cinematic sequence, or they go the Ass Creed route. The closest we've gotten to somewhat AAA working on proper stealth games were the recent Hitman games and even they aren't exactly the perfect stealth game, though they are excellent Hitman games.

>>648
It didn't really have a memorable ending. Became too action in the end.

Every game needs to be a sandbox RPG type game these days. Either that or be a story based hallway shooter. I played the newest Thief game and it's crazy how restrictive it felt. Part of it is how people think too. I remember someone was watching me play Hitman 2 and when I entered a building they expected the game to have to load, since apparently older games as associated with having load screens every 5 seconds despite games like Thief and Hitman being designed specifically to avoid that kind of thing. But the ironic thing is that as Thief has gone on after 2 it started having more and more load screens, even if they're hidden behind elaborate animations in Thief 4. I love stealth games but AAA studios aren't interested in making them and most indie developers probably aren't up to the task, although I have played quite a lot of good Thief fan missions.

I need to check if the Black Parade mod ever came out for Thief.

>>5203
The Black Parade is out, has been for a while I think.

>>5203
Ah, to have competent and intricate level design back. I'd give the entire modern AAA industry for a single AA title that pulls it off well.

>>449
I played the original Thief. It felt tedious to play. If I want to creep around along the shadow of every tree branch while being at a dead snail's pace, I can just go outside where I avoid each passersby like this. It's like I'm a trucker playing trucker simulator.

>>5365
>I can just go outside where I avoid each passersby like this
They can see you, they're just being polite.

>>5365
>Why bother playing video games when I can do the same thing irl
You can go fight in Ukraine too but most people wouldn't choose that over playing an fps. Thief has an interesting setting as well, and great movement. I at least can't do acrobatics irl like I can in Thief. I don't know about you. And climbing shot like that irl is likely to get you arrested.

>>5381
>And climbing shot like that irl is likely to get you arrested.
Reminds me of that guy who broke into Buckingham Palace and tried to kill the Queen with a crossbow.

I remember playing the Thief shareware demo waaaaaay back in the day. It lead to some injokes with my older brother, heh. Moving the corpses around and the guard interactions were really amazing. I'm kind of surprised that the stealth genre is really so bare that the effective origin of it is still the game to beat.
I wonder why it seems like such a niche genre, or perhaps why developers seen hesitant to embrace it. Is it just difficult to get right, or do they feel that no one will be interested in it? I guess it's hard to compete with braindead action stuff with flashing lights and explosions when it comes to mass appeal.

>>5430
I think it is just that most people playing video games (or at least the ones that make the most money) just want action games. Though action games have suffered too because everything needs to have skinner box RPG elements and you can't just make a fun game

I've been thinking though of what kinds of mechanics you could add to a first person stealth game if someone were to make a new one. I don't want every game to just be mimicking Thief. Outside of Hitman's (and similar games) disguise mechanics games really only rely on hiding in the shadows (Thief and Splinter Cell mainly) or just do line of site stealth (Basically everything else. MGS, Dishonored, etc). Maybe the seeming lack of gameplay mechanic variety is part of it too. And while video games don't have to be realistic, becoming invisible while hiding in shadows isn't really something you can even usually do irl so it may take people out of things. Another issue is the required level design, which is at odds with games people make generally these days. Look at Thief 4's poor excuse for level design for instance. Even MGS has suffered, from the earlier games' intricacy to bland and barren open world in MGSV.

Huh. Right now if you have an Amazon Prime membership Thief Gold is for free. Anything I should know if I start playing it?

https://gaming.amazon.com/home

>>5443
Get the NewDark patch. It's based on the game's source code that was found around 2011 and makes it much more compatible with modern systems. Before I installed it all of the cutscenes were skipped and I think it was harder to run it at modern resolutions. It also had performance issues (though that may be more applicable to Thief 2).

>>5215
I had been checking back on it for a while during its development but I guess I lost touch with it before it actually came out. I just saw it on Moddb though and it's got basically universally positive reviews and people calling it possibly better than the main games, so that's pretty exciting. I'll have to play it at some point soon.

I have a bad habit of wanting to play through a fan mission in a single sitting (spent a long time in one sitting playing through Ominous Bequest which was a mistake) though but based on what I'm seeing I probably don't want to do that with the missions in Black Parade.

>>449
I have played the third game. It was fun at first, but it got boring.

>>5434
>I've been thinking though of what kinds of mechanics you could add to a first person stealth game if someone were to make a new one. I don't want every game to just be mimicking Thief.
The first thing to "solve" is how you the player can peek and see without being seen. Third person is fantastic for stealth since you can look around corners and the existence of minimaps with enemy tracking make it easy, but it's very cheaty and not as satisfying. Thief did first person stealth by using sound and brilliant level design. Not sure what specific mechanics you could add to it other than polish. There's gadgets and magic like Dishonored but it depends on how grounded you want your stealth game to be. It's a hard type of game to design.

>Even MGS has suffered, from the earlier games' intricacy to bland and barren open world in MGSV.
Open worlds can be fun, but too much freedom makes it very easy to optimize the fun out of it. The game encourages stealth and non-lethal approaches through mission score, morality, and collecting dudes, but it's an awkward fit with the level design. When combined with how most locations are in open areas with lots of surrounding navigable terrain, the best strategy trends towards methodical tranqing of every enemy from outside before moving in to clean up stragglers in cqc. And if you somehow fuck up and alert the base, you're still fine since you have even more tools to commit the most amount of violence possible. I'm glad there's options and it's a fun game, but as a stealth game it's not very good. It's reminiscent of assassins creed in this respect and less MGS.

For stealth to be good I think there needs to be a greater emphasis on consequences for getting caught. Hard mission objectives failable on breaking stealth is all well and good but it comes as arbitrary if the game design doesn't match. There's also the type of consequence. Reloading a checkpoint is the easy option, but retreading old content quickly turns fear and immersion into frustration.